Conventional visual displays on computer, mobile communications devices, personal digital assistant (“PDA”) and television displays referring to time have used either simple digital numeric displays, or, when referring to time other than the present time, drop down menu boxes, scrolling, and radio buttons. Location selection is generally limited to a “drilling down” by selecting one member of a set, e.g., a county within a state.
Moreover, difficulties often arise when browsing or perusing hierarchically arranged documents, including web pages. Conventional GUI techniques either provide limited visibility into multiple layers of documents or subject topologies of websites or databases, or they provide tree structures which can be difficult to logically organize and display when there are large numbers of documents.